


Live On

by oudeteron



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - All Media Types
Genre: Abbie Deserves Better, Alternate Ending, Canon Dialogue, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Post-Finale, Season 3 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oudeteron/pseuds/oudeteron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faced with the prospect of losing Abbie again, Ichabod knows what he has to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live On

**Author's Note:**

> So who else hated how the finale ended? Here's my take on what I would have preferred, if the series just finished after the third season. Please let me know if you like this version! I didn't write it with the ambition of tying up absolutely all of the loose ends, but I at least attempted to give it some sort of logic as opposed to what the canon writers did. The main reason was obviously to do the characters and their relationship some justice. Abbie deserved SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.

“Never give up on hope, Crane.”

An awful memory flashed through Ichabod's mind, one he had tried his hardest to banish forever. One that was also centered on Abbie as she faced down Pandora's inventory of darkness, taking her last glance from the edge of the unknown. _Take care of each other._ Another request, another plea. Another goodbye.

“Abbie – _no_!”

He moved faster than he could even process, never mind calculate any of the possible outcomes as he usually would. All he knew was that this was wrong: another sacrifice for Abbie to make was wrong, and losing her all over again was not a risk he was going to take. Not now, not after everything. Not ever again.

His entire body protesting, all of his instincts yelling at him to stop, turn around, _run_ , Ichabod leapt forward into the merciless beam of light emanating from Pandora's box, the one point in the universe where he was certain he had to be. He could still see Abbie standing there, still felt her form as soon as he was close enough to embrace her, wanting in vain to shield her from the destruction that was now surely about to claim them both.

“Crane! What do you think you're doing?”

It was hard to speak, what with the light taking them both to pieces, but considering the very real possibility that he would never get to say any of this wherever they were going next, Ichabod forced what was left of his voice to function. “It was you who taught me there is always another way. Let us face whatever may come – together.”

“But the box – it only needs one of us! Why –”

“If you go, I go.” And with those words, he felt – could still feel, somehow – Abbie's arms locking around his waist, her cheek coming to rest on his chest. Calm in the eye of the storm. He looked up, his gaze meeting Pandora's, and for the first time he thought her countenance was one of genuine fear. “I suppose this is it,” he remarked, almost casually.

“You fool,” Pandora spat in that contemptuous tone that meant nothing now. “You love her, don't you? She is your hope. Your everything.”

Ichabod bowed his head. This was a confession that needed to reach the right place. He whispered it into Abbie's hair. “Yes. Yes, I do...”

“Abbie!” came Jenny's voice through the haze that was enveloping them. It got Abbie to raise her head and stand up on tiptoe, presumably to look at her sister over Ichabod's shoulder.

“Take care of yourself. And Dad. He'll need you now too.”

“I'll miss you…” Jenny sounded like she was crying. Pandora's box still remained open and, from the way Ichabod could see through his and Abbie's smaller form, it was far too late to do anything but accept. It was surreal that they had come here to dethrone a god, but that act itself was now swept into insignificance.

The light grew ever more intense, pulsing through their bodies, particles into dust, breath into mist. And before Ichabod Crane knew he was taking his last look at the mortal world, he was gone.

*

If this was death, it could have been worse.

It could also have been a lot better. Ichabod looked around, taking note of his sparse surroundings. He had a body again, or at the very least a corporeal-looking form. The coat he was wearing was his usual one, almost as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. A routine day, save for the part where he was standing in the middle of great empty _nothing_ that only seemed to echo and amplify his thoughts.

Over the years – more years than any human being should have endured – he had read many accounts of the afterlife. Some of them he had even visited before. None could have prepared him for this silence, however. This loneliness. In the more optimistic theories people had, crossing over involved meeting lost loved ones, perhaps even reuniting forever in this new life beyond life. But then again, most of those who had left Ichabod had done so in a less than cordial manner. With a pang he thought of Katrina, the way she had looked away from him as she died in his arms, forever rejecting any love they may once have shared in her last moments. Of course she wouldn't await him. Neither would Betsy after that last conversation in the Catacombs, when she spelled out what Ichabod had realized by then: his heart belonged to Abbie Mills, and with Abbie Mills it would stay.

He simply had to find wherever that was. He took a tentative step, unsure which side was was up, then another as his perception of this strange new dimension stabilized. There was still not a soul around. A cruel joke, given that what had spurred him to action was the very necessity to stop Abbie from going into the light alone. Leaving him behind alone.

_What is there for me in a world without you…_

And yet, the idea of Abbie landing in her own afterlife just like this, her reward for sacrificing herself to avert catastrophe, hurt Ichabod so much more to even contemplate.

“Lieutenant?” he spoke into the silence.

Nothing.

Ichabod Crane was nothing if not dedicated. Some might have opted to call him stubborn, while others reached for more flattering terms that had to do with loyalty. It was all of these traits combined that carried him on, step by disorienting step, until his surroundings began to darken, the pale horizon faded, and he found himself boxed into a narrow corridor.

Startled, Ichabod glanced back. There was a wall.

Well, this was progress. Running into something was better than nothing at all.

With that wry thought he realized, just as the claustrophobia of his new imprisonment began to settle in, that he knew these walls, these markings – these writings. This was the hidden corridor in the Catacombs.

The memory of carrying Abbie along this path, weakened by the box's pull but still indisputably alive, filled him with simultaneous despair and joy. It was right here – Ichabod ran his hands along the walls, retracing his own movements from earlier that day – it was these walls Abbie had leaned on, pulling herself together to dive back into the fight. But there was nobody here now. Even the dust seemed undisturbed. Finding each other here would have made so much sense, if this was the place his steps had led him to, if the fact that the box had taken them both still meant something. Ichabod sped up his walk, one foot in front of the other until he was running along the path, no longer able to keep up with the inscriptions.

“Lieutenant! Abbie!”

He was back in the main hall, overlooking the plains and the mountainside. It was as eerie as he remembered, though the once subtle undercurrent of sadness that permeated the temple was now quite overwhelming. Ichabod steadied himself, catching his breath. There had to be a clue, if only he managed to make his brain focus. If he could decipher the necessary details and extract some semblance of reason out of the jumbled mess of his mind as it struggled to comprehend this harsh reality.

As he began to calm himself, he saw it. He saw, in fact, a great many things. The map Abbie had drawn on the wall was still there, as was the symbol that manifested their bond. There was also the makeshift hourglass, motionless now. Ichabod stepped up to the mural, transfixed. This was Abbie's handwriting, unmistakable. Her resourcefulness, determination, the way she had made a home of this desolate land as even time itself abandoned her.

That loneliness crushed Ichabod with all its weight, to the point that he physically lowered his gaze. And there, lying scattered, he saw the chess pieces.

After their reunion, Abbie had told him about all the one-sided showdowns she had orchestrated between the two of them, supplying Ichabod's side of the match as if they had been real. _They were real,_ Ichabod had told her. “They were real,” he repeated out loud, crouching to pick up a stone that may have been a pawn or a king.

Perhaps he dared to hope. Perhaps this was the way.

“The phrase _check mate_ ,” he declared to the empty air, as if simply sharing one of his usual bits of trivia, “is believed to come from the Persian phrase meaning the _king is dead_. We have succeeded, Lieutenant. Our sacrifice has ensured the enemy king's downfall.” He stood the figure on the rudimentary chess board, then knocked it over with an exaggerated twitch of one finger. “We have toppled the tyranny of the Hidden One and –”

“Sacrifice. Wait, does that make _you_ the queen?”

Abbie's voice, amused, almost lighthearted, pierced the stillness of the temple. Ichabod sprang up and staggered back. “Lieutenant?”

“Crane, listen to me.”

“Abbie!” In desperation, Ichabod looked around, but there was no one in the chamber except for himself and those few mementos of Abbie's extended stay. “Where are you?”

“I'm with you, just like you were with me last time. Go to the well, and don't stop thinking of our bond. We need to get you out of here again.”

Ichabod's voice dropped to little more than a reverent whisper. “Abbie...”

“Later, Crane. Follow my voice. Quick, and don't look back!”

He ran. No distance was far enough to last between himself and the well that he knew would bring him back into the present day, or wherever he could return to now that he was dead. “Jump,” said Abbie's voice when Ichabod made it to the portal, and he could see the landscape growing dark, a sudden unexplained shadow blotting out the sun. “Don't mind about the rope, just jump!”

With a great clamour of rubble behind him, Ichabod did just that. The last rays of the sun were cloaked in dust as he lost his balance plummeting into the well.

*

He expected to have to swim his way up through water, but instead his feet hit solid wood. A fresh breeze whipped his face. There was the far-off bustle of traffic, a sound that used to be a source of consternation but now registered as wholly positive in contrast to the uncanny stillness of the temple. More importantly, though, Abbie Mills was standing in front of him.

“Good,” she said by way of greeting. “You made it out of there right on time.”

“Lieutenant – I don't understand –”

Of all the things that vied for attention in Ichabod's mind, it was in its way fitting that the one statement that prevailed was so honest yet pathetic. Abbie smiled, extending him a hand. “Shall we sit down?”

It was only then that Ichabod realized they were on the front porch of the house they had shared throughout the past months. Still numb with confusion and wordless, breathless relief, he nodded and followed Abbie to take a seat at the small outdoor table.

“You probably want to know what happened. Why you were in the Catacombs, and not me.”

“Well...” Ichabod began, still hardly sure of how to speak, “among many other things, yes.”

“Then let's start there. After we – after _you_ did what you did –”

“My apologies, Lieutenant. There was just no chance I would sit idly by and watch you give up your own life. Not again.”

Abbie's voice seemed to hitch in her throat as she responded. “Yeah, when you did that. We both died, Crane. You jumped in when the box was taking my soul, and so it took yours too.”

“I supposed that would be the outcome.”

“Well, you miscalculated a little,” Abbie said sternly. “Pandora's box only needed one Witness. _One_ eternal soul. So when you got yourself killed, again, you were trapped. In the box itself. That's how you ended up in the temple.”

Ichabod stared at her. “How do you know all this?”

“I was the lucky one. After I died, I ended up in this diner with Corbin. We...talked. We made peace. Joe was there, too. But then Corbin told me that you were still out there trapped between worlds, back in the Catacombs. That there wasn't much time to get you back before the illusion collapsed, now that the Hidden One's gone.”

“You came to save me…”

The look Abbie gave him was one of pure exasperation. “Crane, there was _no way_ I was going to leave you there like that. You're my guy. Always. Plus, we'd already made it out of there once, and we did it together. At least this time it wasn't Pandora hot on our heels.”

“I owe you my deepest gratitude,” Ichabod said, hoping it came across with the appropriate humility. Now that the initial rush of the reunion wore off, his throat felt suddenly constricted. All the feelings that had been warring in his chest for months and months returned full force. “Lieutenant, I…”

“Crane.” What Abbie always called him. A prompt for him to go on, encouraging without judgement.

“When Pandora said that I loved you. I'm sorry. I should have told you much sooner, so you would have found out some other way. I do love you...Abbie. When I said you were a partner of the highest caliber, I meant it in every way one person can say to another.”

There was a long silence as Abbie merely fixed him with a soul-stripping look. Then, at last, “You really mean that, Crane?” Her voice was soft, the voice of someone who was finally letting herself believe a truth long sensed and held dear.

“I do.”

Abbie held out a hand to his face, and Ichabod leaned into the touch with his entire being. He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Abbie's skin that for all intents and purposes shouldn't have been there, but he had already accepted that today went past whatever reference point for death and life he might have ever had.

“Be still, my beating heart,” Abbie whispered, stroking his cheek gently. And before either of them had a chance to parse what was happening, she leaned closer, her face tilted up, and they were kissing.

If anything today felt like an eternity – but in a blissful, peaceful sense – this was it. There was so much warmth between their lips, spreading slowly at first, then more fervent and desperate as the truth of both their feelings became crystal clear at last. They ended up with their arms wrapped around each other, their foreheads resting together even after their lips had parted.

“We never had a chance to talk about this.”

Abbie gave a quiet chuckle. “We never had a chance to say a lot of things.”

“So it would seem,” Ichabod conceded, still holding onto Abbie's waist, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. “Now, Lieutenant, we'll have all the time in the world.”

“Actually, I liked when you said Abbie back there.”

“W-well – Abbie. My apologies.”

“Don't sweat it, Crane. See, I'm still adjusting to all of this myself.”

They disengaged from the embrace at some point in the conversation, and Ichabod noticed that their surroundings were changing again. They were still at the porch, but the sound of the suburban afternoon was dissipating. Instead, an intense source of light appeared a short distance away, emanating a soothing energy that seemed to replace the very air around them.

There was a popular take on the afterlife Ichabod knew about, but having it manifest out of the blue still presented with some disbelief. “Do you see what I see?”

“Light at the end of the tunnel,” Abbie said in a tone of calm acceptance as she stood up, motioning for him to follow her. “Are we ready?”

“For an eternity with you? I am, most certainly.”

Abbie smiled. “Then let's go.”

They took each other's hand, an echo of how they entered the Catacombs – so recent, yet a lifetime ago – and stepped together into the light.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Her Majesty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057559) by [cherrytruck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytruck/pseuds/cherrytruck)




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